Category: Social

The messaging apps space is crowded. You’ve got Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, GroupMe, Kik Messenger, WeChat and a whole bunch of other apps that allow you to message people one way or the other. Kites is a new messaging app, where the developers behind the app believe that messages sometimes are more relevant at a particular place, instead of an inbox.

With Kites, you can leave a public message for everyone to see, or a private message for your friends or a certain friend at a specific location. Upon launching Kites, you can immediately see all the messages dropped for you on a map. Swiping from the left edge of the screen reveals the navigation drawer, where you can navigate the app.

One usecase the developer is keen on, is the ability to leave your friends ‘secret’ messages. These messages are not visible until your friend is close to its location. When you’re ate the location, Kites will notify you, so you can leave messages like ‘the key is under the mat,’ and be sure that they will only see it when they are actually there. This could also be fun for a scavenger hunt or paired with a geocaching app for clues.

The messaging app looks beautiful and follows the latest design guidelines. It features a transparent status and navigation bar and the app runs really smooth. Especially the navigation bar is nifty, with the opacity turned down a notch. This makes the navigation bar just see through enough to be able to read stuff “behind” it, but also makes the navigation bar stand out when it needs too.

Like every app with a social component, the app is only fun when your friends are using for kites. The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about how I could win them over to get them to start using Kites and quite frankly I couldn’t really come up with good arguments. So I guess I’m not entirely sold on the concept. Nonetheless, Kites is a beautiful app and maybe you can come up with a fun way to use it.